DEA Says It Will Decide Whether to Reschedule Marijuana by Mid-2016

April 6, 2016
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The Drug Enforcement Administration plans to decide whether marijuana should reclassified under federal law in “the first half of 2016,” the agency said in a letter to senators.

DEA, responding to a 2015 letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and seven other Democratic senators urging the federal government to facilitate research into marijuana’s medical benefits, doesn’t indicate whether it will reclassify marijuana as less dangerous.

The U.S. has five categories, or schedules, classifying illegal drugs or chemicals that can be used to make them. Schedule I is reserved for drugs the DEA considers to have the highest potential for abuse and no “current accepted medical use.” Marijuana has been classified as Schedule I for decades, along with heroin and LSD. Rescheduling marijuana wouldn’t make it legal, but may ease restrictions on research and reduce penalties for marijuana offenses.

“DEA understands the widespread interest in the prompt resolution to these petitions and hopes to release its determination in the first half of 2016,” DEA said the 25-page letter, obtained by The Huffington Post. [Read more at The Huffington Post]

This Post Has 2 Comments

steven siegel says:

April 6, 2016 at 10:51 am

About time although I fear that the DEA can or will take this opportunity to throw cannabis back under its control by rescheduling it as a schedule II drug so it would be duly authorized to step back into cannabis and decide how it is prescribed and/or the terms and conditions of its e-prescription. My company BioTracTHC holds the (2) patents for two token biometric e-prescribing which is the only way a Schedule II drug can legally be prescribed in the United States and even with that fact, I still am fearful of the DEA’s motivation in light of the lost hundreds of millions and millions of dollars of funding and from confiscations from marijuana raids, arrest, busts and Rico. I pray people keep this in mind that are pushing for this reschedule.

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Daniel Di Paolo says:

April 8, 2016 at 1:42 pm

The Drug Enforcement Agency should have only an advisory role and the FDA should be the final arbiter of the rescheduling of cannabis. The DEA will not vote for rescheduling cannabis because it would be acting against self-preservation. Law enforcement agencies have no business writing medical marijuana policy. As an example, Pennsylvania recently passed what it calls medical marijuana legislation, but it does not allow actual plant material or any other smokable form to be legal. The bill was written with input from various LE agencies and district attorneys, and was passed by Republican-majority state houses. The outcome is that patients are denied the route of administration with the fastest onset of therapeutic effect, which also allows patients to adjust their dosage most efficiently. This was done for the simple reason that LE wants to be able to cite, arrest or incarcerate anyone found with plant material, thus making it easier to justify their budgets and manpower in the laziest possible way. So similarly, it seems that DEA funding could potentially dry up as the war on drugs moves to its proper role of fighting against chemically synthesized drugs duch as cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and designer drugs.

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